the floorboards, guffaws from the wiry crown uncurling in my hand.
You stood your ground, smiled sweet simply, urged me to understand.
I looked numbly at the thing that I held. Suddenly I was blacker than
I ever was, colored all over everything, Negro was unleashed, jigaboo
came tumbling down, jungle bunny came out of hiding. My real hair
unflattened in new air, popped its day of dust and sprang corkscrews,
lending the drama its only motion. I opened my mouth to drown you
in raging, rip deep gash through the god of you. But all that came out,
stunned for all this time, were the first three words of this poem.
CARNIE
Not good enough, not teeth enough, for Riverview,
he rolls into town under the shoulders of night with
his sleazed and pimpled caravan. Taught to screech
inwardly at his filth, we nevertheless find ourselves
drawn to his gray devastation of grin, the sneaky way
stories map themselves onto the backs of his hands.
Girls, giddy in the throes of repulsion, can’t help
visioning him as a blazing and wordless fuck, skin
sandy, grating, the mud of his open mouth sliding all
over us. His snake-lidded eyes know how we resent
balance. In line, steamed and bewildered, we consider
his bitter knowledge of levers and gears, listen to
muttered instructions on all the best ways not to die.
And admit it now, little girl. With spit and the heel
of a hand, you seek to be wildly industrious. You
want to clean off a place on his body, find a patch
of landscape the sun has not quite killed, and you
want to wallow in the dirt denied you by Mama,
screaming into the blue of freefall, riding the natural
stink off that boy. And you got your head thrown back.
GUESS WHO’S CLOSEST TO HEAVEN
Forefinger, nail clipped blunt, breaks the chill skin
of the pomade, tunnels for the bottom
of the tin, scoops out a sweet-scented lump.
Smeared between slow hands, the smell breaks open,
life leaking from violet, and lends Sunday
stink to thin hair wired and dark from washing.
And this happens behind so many doors—
in Mister Odell’s cluttered kitchenette,
in Freddy the butcher’s misted mirror.
They groom for glory, snap on dull Spiedels,
pour all of their ache into squarish serge.
They are so close to dying they can tell
you what their heaven smells like and it smells
different for each of them: to Mister Earl,
it’s steam and anise. To Ole James Markum,
dead-slow knotting his noose of a necktie,
heaven smells of Tuscaloosa summer.
Between them and there, perhaps another
hundred Sundays of can’t-flinch ritual,
splashing pungent scent into throat hollows
and cave of the chest, treating tired wingtips
to a Vaseline shimmer. Old suits freed
from plastic, creases blade-sharp, double-checked.
And then on Sunday, Second Street Baptist
or Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist
or Church of the Living Lord opens up
before them with its splintered pews and fat,
peach-powdered usherettes. Our men rock with
The Word, feel that huge holy hand icing
their spines. Content with being softly doomed,
they mumble memorized gospel and feel
a hollow swell inside them. They pray for
minor comforts, their knees hurting like hell
with the coming thunder. But no amount
of kneeling can move those suits. And, goddamn.
Their hair is perfect.
HIS FOR THE TAKING
My mother’s sister, Mary Sanders, wailed
You muthafucka! just before throat-snorting
the contents of her perfectly-portioned dinner
and hawking a glob of it toward the wall
beside my head. Her eyes were rolling worlds,
lit maniacally from behind, her hair steamed
and untwirling. The hospital room smelled
warmly of spittle, scream, and scrubbed piss,
and again I cursed my mother for portioning
my teenage time this way, charging me with
the third-shift-weekends spoon-feeding of my
unraveled aunt, her brain dimmed and distanced
by Alzheimer’s and errant shards of Mississippi.
She recognized none of us, slapped and spat
at our attempts to be relatives, and reveled
in her new hot vocabulary, rolling goddamnit
and shit and kiss my black country ass around
on her formerly God-fearing Delta tongue.
I pressed buttons for her, inched forkfuls
of dry chicken toward her clenched teeth,
wiped her venom from my cheeks and hair.
Other sicknesses whistled through her pores
and she slept fitfully, feces drying under her nails.
It was weeks before I noticed that my mother
wasn’t part of the reluctant rotation of caregivers.
She spent her days just outside the closed door
of her sister’s dismantling, numb to the blaring,
praying for God to enter the hospital room,
wrap His tired arms around someone, and leave.
DIRTY DIANA
There are oh-so-many things a woman can do with the business
end of a diamond. Cut a man’s throat and the blood rinses away
easily. Slice an eerie, convincing grin into the back of your head.
Gut a rival. Snip an emergency hem to release the utter glamour
of knobbed knees. Magically turn Tuesday’s wig into Saturday’s.
The secret is to never stop crooning, to inject your roundabout lyric
with air, a little violence, frosted water. Warble like you were born
with the engine of switched hips, like your breasts suddenly swing
beyond your absence of breasts. Ms. Ross, you will be underestimated.
Just make sure they never find out how you killed Florence, slyly
slipping just the slightest hesitation into her fat heart, introducing
the suggestion that it explode. Fling glitter at their faces and cup
a diamond in your palm. Shimmy your history into a sequined
sheath, where no one will ever find it. Disguise it as sin, as sway.
AN OPEN LETTER TO JOSEPH PETER NARAS
or, The Regrettable Dramatic Arc of Loving a White Boy
It’s a wonder our grind never toppled, that we were lap and gulp sincerely, lips layered away, pubics in expecting parallel, burning the outlawed outline of our writhe into the lawn, outlandish hues vital and nasty in erupting weeds, our bound structure never wearying of the questioning prod, the wishful pummel, ninth period over, the snarlers and spitters slow gone and we were out loud, right out in the open, out of our damned minds running our tongues around the edges of war, how socially insane our primal twist, the doomed conjoined clock of us, the engine of our against, your fingers a disruption in hair just learning to explode. Every Thursday, Tuesday, Friday, Monday, Wednesday, we stumbled in frustrated dangle away from the grounds of Carl Schurz High School, temperatures skewered, our souths hammered and drip through denims. Separate buses spit their oily smoke to the north and west and we pressed radiant genital ache into the ride, red-inking continued crave into matching notebooks, our poetry ripped through with dactyls and something no one but two ballad-battered fools would call a future.
Love at our sixteen smothered the jointly-ad
dressed niggernote.
Don’t know
why it took your father’s friend so long to see us, to witness our open wounds browning the grass. Imagine his gape his flushed goddamnit his bulge-eyed conviction to upright the collapsing, to shove the wild way-ward back into orbit, to push those colors back inside the lines, to reteach the day away from the fall. I’ve dreamed often of his vile and sputtered reportage, spittle showering the receiver, every other word a resolute and hurtled scarlet.
AN OPEN LETTER TO JOSEPH PETER NARAS, TAKE 2
or, Today’s After-School Special Veers into Explosive Territory
Let me tell you why it never occurred to me to be afraid.
You took off your glasses, and you were perfect, eyes bluer
than any prince written, reachably gorgeous, no hiccup
of light when you stretched for me. No discussion of why
we shouldn’t tangle and pump against your locker between
periods, why I shouldn’t wrap yards of yarn around your
class ring, wear it dripped between new breasts. We snuck
around and about and pretended normal, lying to parents
about meetings and committees, entering the junior prom
through separate doors, boy, damn decorum, I loved you.
I know I did because I know some things by now. I know
that your body was a wizened and ill-advised battlefield
against mine, that your mouth was razored, that “I love you”
was a huge and unwieldy declaration, the kind of blue you
immediately unforgive. My parents weren’t yours. They
considered you the naptime-sized American dream, a rung
on the stepladder, the climb every white-capped mountain.
Just be careful, they said, while your father spat blades, said
(these are the words I’ve imagined, slapped with the wide-eye)
I’ll throw you out of my house if I hear about you seeing
that black girl again. Joe, I loved you then, and I love you
still. We are drama born of the truth tell, our tongues so stupid
and urged they continually reached the back of our throats.
Who hates me for actually knowing this? There are hundreds
of songs written about all the things you can’t do at sixteen.
There are a million songs written about what I didn’t do with you.
5
WAIT
AN OPEN LETTER TO JOSEPH PETER NARAS, TAKE 3
or, Cue the Waterworks
When I was a kid, my mother convinced my father that I’d done
something terrible, she urged him to spank me, and he did.
His blows were reluctant pillows, pullback and whisper slow,
more for appearance than correction, and while he whupped,
he cried. Slow, beautiful cries, elegant and silent, he wept.
After vowing to never touch his daughter that way, he went
through the prescribed motions, hiding his tears, and I bucked,
bellowed, scripting my twist, knowing what drama was required.
That was the first time I saw a man cry. When your dad became
a bomb, vowing to blow at the continued thought of your mouth
on me, we stood at the bus stop that last day, matching fingertips,
major players in a terrible love story’s climactic scene. I boarded
the bus and clawed the window while you stood on the sidewalk,
the sugar of what we’d been staining your cheeks; all that was
missing were the drooped tulips and aching strings. And the gulp
that happens when a man loses hold and forgets the definition
of man. I wonder if your father ever wonders where I am.
I wonder if he wonders who I was.
ASKING FOR A HEART ATTACK
For Aretha Franklin
Aretha. Deep butter dipped, scorched pot liquor,
swift lick off the sugar cane. Vaselined knees
clack gospel, hinder the waddling South. ’Retha.
Greased, she glows in limelit circle, defending
her presence with a sanctified moan, ass rumbling
toward curfew’s backstreets where jukes still gulp silver.
Goddess of Hoppin’ John and bumped buttermilk,
girl know Jesus by His first name. She the one
sang His drooping down from ragged wooden T,
dressed Him in blood-red shine, conked that holy head,
rustled up excuses for bus fare and took
the Deity downtown. They found a neon
backslap, coaxed the DJ and slid electric
till the lights slammed on. Don’t know where you goin’,
who you going with, but you sho can’t stay here.
Aretha taught the Good Son slow, dirty
words for His daddy’s handiwork, laughed as he
first sniffed whiskey’s surface, hissed him away when
he sought to touch His hand to the blue in her.
She was young then, spindly and thin ribs paining,
her heartbox thrumming in a suspicious key.
So Jesus blessed her, opened her throat and taught
her to wail that way she do, Lawd she do wail
that way don’t she do that wail the way she do
wail that way, don’t she? That girl can wail that way.
Now when Aretha’s fleeing screech jump from juke
and reach been-done-wrong bone, all the Lord can do
is stand at a wary distance and applaud.
Oh yeah, and maybe shield His heart a little.
So you question her several shoulders,
the soft stairs of flesh leading to her chins,
the steel bones of an impossible dress
gnawing raw into bubbling obliques?
Ain’t your mama never schooled you in how
black women collect the world, build other
bodies onto our own? No earthly man
knows the solution to our hips, asses
urgent as sirens, our titties bursting
with traveled roads. Ask Aretha just what
Jesus whispered to her that night about
the gospel hidden in lard and sugar.
She’ll tell you why black girls grow fat
away from the world, and toward each other.
HIP-HOP GHAZAL
Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.
As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,
inhaling bass line, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.
Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ’tween floorboards,
wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.
Engines, grinding, rotating, smokin’, gotta pull back some.
Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of swinging true hips.
Gotta love us girls, just struttin’ down Chicago streets
killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.
Crying ’bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off
what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.
LOOKING TO SEE HOW THE EYES INHABIT DARK, WONDERING ABOUT LIGHT
In December 1999, Stevie Wonder sought to undergo an operation to partially restore his sight. He made the round of talk shows, trumpeting the possibilities, before the story dropped off the radar. Doctors had declared that he was not a good candidate for the procedure.
Look. When he assumes he is alone, he absently claws the air for light.
See how he pulls the sun toward himself. Even as he conjures, wonders,
eyes spit their cruel blanks, drench him in mud. His mama is the dark;
dark is his daddy. A shiver in his lids becomes his next church, his eyes
wonder at the black bottomle
ss flash, the siphoning of narrative. He can see
light as it exists in memory—lush, fleeting, then maddening. Made ya look.
Darkness strives to be his comfort. But he is obsessed by the need to look,
eyes flat, roiling, his head adjusting as if. He tilts toward each tongue of light,
wonders at its evil sweet, squints, strains. Dark whispers, if you must see,
see the gifts I have given—the unflinching knowledge of self, the wild wonder
light has birthed in you, how it blooms without answer. He touches his eye.
Look. He lifts the lid, pokes the dead orb with a finger, cries out again to dark.
Seasons change only on his skin. Chill and steam nudge the edges of dark.
Wondering what year, what June, what clock it is, his useless eyes look,
light upon layered shadow, scan the unraveled empty. He curses those eyes,
eyes that simply loll and water and grow impossibly wide, clawing for light.
Look how completely he has learned the language of the hand, stark wonder
darkening weary palms as he presses them flat against against, wanting to see.
Eyes, they say, can be sexed, propped wide, flooded with daybreak. He’ll see
lightning, dim dance, maybe a minute of day. Doctors tout the shattered dark,
look beneath trembling lids for doors, promise his child’s face. And he wonders—
wonder being the only response he trusts—as hope is unleashed. It hurts to look.
Dark, desperately clutching, woos him, redefines beauty as the absence of light.
See his torso ripple, how he fights with his own fingers, how he weeps for eyes.
Wonder how long it will take before those who whisper the promise of eyes
look hard at the one-soul religion they’ve crafted, scan their data and finally see
dark as it owns him—numb to their screeching miracles, overpowering the light?
Light is overrated, they decide. Best not to shock the system, rip holes in the dark,
see up close the cacophonous stanzas sight scribbles over time. It hurts to look.
Eyes overwork, tangle lessons best learned by touch. It’s much safer to wonder.
Light a match, wave it back and forth, watch him follow the waltzing heat. Wonder,
darkly, what hollow blessings he has left to cling to. He follows music with his eyes,
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